Chapter 25 #4
He turned his mouth into her palm, and for a moment they just stood there, the two of them.
There was nothing in the touch except the accumulation of wanting, the months of shared spaces and separate beds, the years of merging and then unspooling lives.
Miranda felt the tenderness in the gesture like a pulse under her skin, until she had to look away or risk dissolving entirely.
She stepped backward, toward the bedroom, not out of seduction but necessity; her legs physically needed to move, and back was the only direction available.
Garrett didn’t follow. He remained at his post beside the sofa, hands now empty, watching her with an attentiveness that felt neither predatory nor chivalrous, just honest.
Miranda kept moving until the change in carpet signaled the threshold to the bedroom, and then she stopped, looked over her shoulder, and said, “You were planning to sleep on the sofa.”
Garrett nodded, and for the first time he looked sheepish. “Yes.”
Miranda pressed her shoulder against the doorframe, feeling the smooth wood against her scapula. “No. Not tonight.”
She watched as the initial confusion crossed his face, transforming quickly into understanding.
He did not lunge for her, did not attempt to close the space until she explicitly offered it.
So Miranda held out her hand, not in some movie-worthy slow-motion, but as plainly as she could, her wrist cocked in the way she remembered from holding Owen’s hand out for his first steps: open, expectant, without shame.
Garrett crossed the tiny room and did not touch her until his hand was almost flush with hers and he could see that she would not retract it.
His fingers were very warm, which Miranda registered as a point of relief—how many times had she worried that the next time she reached for him, he’d be a stranger?
But the heat was familiar, not just from memory but from the repeated act of knowing and being known.
His grip was not tight, but there was a contained strength in it, a reserve that said I will not take more than you offer.
At the bedroom door, Miranda stopped again and let go of his hand, using it to draw a line in the air between them.
“This does not mean I am coming home,” she said.
He nodded, almost smiling. “I know.”
“It does not mean I trust you yet.”
Again, “I know.”
She looked at the bed, its surface crisply made, the duvet an unfamiliar shade of cream, then back at him. “It means I want you tonight.”
This time, the gratitude on Garrett’s face was so open—so free of calculation or hope for future reward—that Miranda almost had to avert her eyes.
But she didn’t. She watched him take in the words and nearly miss the way his posture changed, the subtle vector of his entire body bending toward her, not in anticipation, but in readiness.
He wanted to be where she was, even if the terms were provisional.
“Then tonight is enough,” Garrett said, and it was.
Miranda stepped back through the doorway, closing the gap between herself and the bed, and gestured for him to follow. She drew him into the room and closed the door behind them with a soft click.
For a long moment, they simply stood there, not touching, not speaking. Miranda watched Garrett’s gaze, how it swept the room once before returning to her, as if to memorize the details of their new context before risking a move.
She wondered if it was possible for two people to relearn each other’s bodies without erasing all the prior versions, if the act of being together now could occur without constant reference to the way it had once been.
She was about to say something—maybe to invite a joke, or to ask if he was nervous—when Garrett stepped forward and brushed his lips against hers. The kiss was fleeting, almost chaste, but it sparked something steady in Miranda’s chest.
She felt herself lean into it, not out of obligation but because the sensation was both alien and essential.
She realized, with the clarity of someone standing at a border they once thought impassable, that she had wanted this, not only the act but the wanting itself, for longer than she’d allowed herself to name.
The second kiss was less careful, but no less deliberate.
Garrett’s hands found her waist, still hovering at first, then committing with a gentle pressure that forced Miranda’s attention to the axis of her body.
She was acutely aware of the difference: the way her new shape—hips wider, waist less distinct, the soft give of her stomach—registered beneath his palms.
As their embrace lingered, Miranda could feel the weight of her insecurities lifting, as if his touch held the power to dissolve her doubts.
In that moment of vulnerability, she found strength in his unwavering support.
The silence between them was no longer uneasy; it was a comforting reminder of their unspoken connection.
With a sense of calm settling over her, Miranda finally let herself relax into his embrace, allowing herself to be vulnerable and open. The world seemed to fade away, leaving just the two of them in their own bubble of intimacy and mutual understanding.
And as they stood there, locked in a wordless exchange of emotions, Miranda realized that this was where she belonged – in his arms, where her fears melted away and her heart found peace.